WHEN Rollin started down the street
the afternoon that Jasper stood looking
out of his window he was not thinking of
Rachel Winslow and did not expect to see
her anywhere. He had come suddenly upon
her as he turned into the avenue and his
heart had leaped up at the sight of her.
He walked along by her now, rejoicing
after all in a little moment of this
earthly love he could not drive out of
his life.

"I have just been over to see
Virginia," said Rachel. "She tells me
the arrangements are nearly completed
for the transfer of the Rectangle
property."

"Yes. It has been a tedious case in
the courts. Did Virginia show you all
the plans and specifications for
building?"

"We looked over a good many. It is
astonishing to me where Virginia has
managed to get all her ideas about this
work."

"Virginia knows more now about
Arnold Toynbee and East End London and
Institutional Church work in America
than a good many professional slum
workers. She has been spending nearly
all summer in getting information."
Rollin was beginning to feel more at
ease as they talked over this coming
work of humanity. It was safe, common
ground.

"What have you been doing all
summer? I have not seen much of you,"
Rachel suddenly asked, and then her face
warmed with its quick flush of tropical
color as if she might have implied too
much interest in Rollin or too much
regret at not seeing him oftener.

"I have been busy," replied Rollin
briefly.

"Tell me something about it,"
persisted Rachel. "You say so little.
Have I a right to ask?"

She put the question very frankly,
turning toward Rollin in real earnest.

"Yes, certainly," he replied, with
a graceful smile. "I am not so certain
that I can tell you much. I have been
trying to find some way to reach the men
I once knew and win them into more
useful lives."

He stopped suddenly as if he were
almost afraid to go on. Rachel did not
venture to suggest anything.

"I have been a member of the same
company to which you and Virginia
belong," continued Rollin, beginning
again. "I have made the pledge to do as
I believe Jesus would do, and it is in
trying to answer this question that I
have been doing my work."

"That is what I do not understand.
Virginia told me about the other. It
seems wonderful to think that you are
trying to keep that pledge with us. But
what can you do with the club men?"

"You have asked me a direct
question and I shall have to answer it
now," replied Rollin, smiling again.
"You see, I asked myself after that
night at the tent, you remember" (he
spoke hurriedly and his voice trembled a
little), "what purpose I could now have
in my life to redeem it, to satisfy my
thought of Christian discipleship? And
the more I thought of it, the more I was
driven to a place where I knew I must
take up the cross. Did you ever think
that of all the neglected beings in our
social system none are quite so
completely left alone as the fast young
men who fill the clubs and waste their
time and money as I used to? The
churches look after the poor, miserable
creatures like those in the Rectangle;
they make some effort to reach the
working man, they have a large
constituency among the average salary-
earning people, they send money and
missionaries to the foreign heathen, but
the fashionable, dissipated young men
around town, the club men, are left out
of all plans for reaching and
Christianizing. And yet no class of
people need it more. I said to myself:
'I know these men, their good and their
bad qualities. I have been one of them.
I am not fitted to reach the Rectangle
people. I do not know how. But I think I
could possibly reach some of the young
men and boys who have money and time to
spend.' So that is what I have been
trying to do. When I asked as you did,
What would Jesus do?' that was my
answer. It has been also my cross."

Rollin's voice was so low on this
last sentence that Rachel had difficulty
in hearing him above the noise around
them, But she knew what he had said. She
wanted to ask what his methods were. But
she did not know how to ask him. Her
interest in his plan was larger than
mere curiosity. Rollin Page was so
different now from the fashionable young
man who had asked her to be his wife
that she could not help thinking of him
and talking with him as if he were an
entirely new acquaintance.

They had turned off the avenue and
were going up the street to Rachel's
home. It was the same street where
Rollin had asked Rachel why she could
not love him. They were both stricken
with a sudden shyness as they went on.
Rachel had not forgotten that day and
Rollin could not. She finally broke a
long silence by asking what she had not
found words for before.

"In your work with the club men,
with your old acquaintances, what sort
of reception do they give you? How do
you approach them? What do they say?"

Rollin was relieved when Rachel
spoke. He answered quickly:
"Oh, it depends on the man. A good
many of them think I am a crank. I have
kept my membership up and am in good
standing in that way. I try to be wise
and not provoke any unnecessary
criticism. But you would be surprised to
know how many of the men have responded
to my appeal. I could hardly make you
believe that only a few nights ago a
dozen men became honestly and earnestly
engaged in a conversation over religious
matters. I have had the great joy of
seeing some of the men give up bad
habits and begin a new life. 'What would
Jesus do?' I keep asking it. The answer
comes slowly, for I am feeling my way
slowly. One thing I have found out. The
men are not fighting shy of me. I think
that is a good sign. Another thing: I
have actually interested some of them in
the Rectangle work, and when it is
started up they will give something to
help make it more powerful. And in
addition to all the rest, I have found a
way to save several of the young fellows
from going to the bad in gambling."

Rollin spoke with enthusiasm. His
face was transformed by his interest in
the subject which had now become a part
of his real life. Rachel again noted the
strong, manly tone of his speech. With
it all she knew there was a deep,
underlying seriousness which felt the
burden of the cross even while carrying
it with joy. The next time she spoke it
was with a swift feeling of justice due
to Rollin and his new life.

"Do you remember I reproached you
once for not having any purpose worth
living for?" she asked, while her
beautiful face seemed to Rollin more
beautiful than ever when he had won
sufficient self-control to look up. "I
want to say, I feel the need of saying,
in justice to you now, that I honor you
for your courage and your obedience to
the promise you have made as you
interpret the promise. The life you are
living is a noble one."

Rollin trembled. His agitation was
greater than he could control. Rachel
could not help seeing it. They walked
along in silence. At last Rollin said:
"I thank you. It has been worth
more to me than I can tell you to hear
you say that." He looked into her face
for one moment. She read his love for
her in that look, but he did not speak.

When they separated Rachel went
into the house and, sitting down in her
room, she put her face in her hands and
said to herself: "I am beginning to know
what it means to be loved by a noble
man. I shall love Rollin Page after all.
What am I saying! Rachel Winslow, have
you forgotten -- "

She rose and walked back and forth.
She was deeply moved. Nevertheless, it
was evident to herself that her emotion
was not that of regret or sorrow.
Somehow a glad new joy had come to her.
She had entered another circle of
experience, and later in the day she
rejoiced with a very strong and sincere
gladness that her Christian discipleship
found room in this crisis for her
feeling. It was indeed a part of it, for
if she was beginning to love Rollin Page
it was the Christian man she had begun
to love; the other never would have
moved her to this great change.

And Rollin, as he went back,
treasured a hope that had been a
stranger to him since Rachel had said no
that day. In that hope he went on with
his work as the days sped on, and at no
time was he more successful in reaching
and saving his old acquaintances than in
the time that followed that chance
meeting with Rachel Winslow.

The summer had gone and Raymond was
once more facing the rigor of her winter
season. Virginia had been able to
accomplish a part of her plan for
"capturing the Rectangle," as she called
it. But the building of houses in the
field, the transforming of its bleak,
bare aspect into an attractive park, all
of which was included in her plan, was a
work too large to be completed that fall
after she had secured the property. But
a million dollars in the hands of a
person who truly wants to do with it as
Jesus would, ought to accomplish wonders
for humanity in a short time, and Henry
Maxwell, going over to the scene of the
new work one day after a noon hour with
the shop men, was amazed to see how much
had been done outwardly.

Yet he walked home thoughtfully,
and on his way he could not avoid the
question of the continual problem thrust
upon his notice by the saloon. How much
had been done for the Rectangle after
all? Even counting Virginia's and
Rachel's work and Mr. Gray's, where had
it actually counted in any visible
quantity? Of course, he said to himself,
the redemptive work begun and carried on
by the Holy Spirit in His wonderful
displays of power in the First Church
and in the tent meetings had had its
effect upon the life of Raymond. But as
he walked past saloon after saloon and
noted the crowds going in and coming out
of them, as he saw the wretched dens, as
many as ever apparently, as he caught
the brutality and squalor and open
misery and degradation on countless
faces of men and women and children, he
sickened at the sight. He found himself
asking how much cleansing could a
million dollars poured into this
cesspool accomplish? Was not the living
source of nearly all the human misery
they sought to relieve untouched as long
as the saloons did their deadly but
legitimate work? What could even such
unselfish Christian discipleship as
Virginia's and Rachel's do to lessen the
stream of vice and crime so long as the
great spring of vice and crime flowed as
deep and strong as ever? Was it not a
practical waste of beautiful lives for
these young women to throw themselves
into this earthly hell, when for every
soul rescued by their sacrifice the
saloon made two more that needed rescue?

He could not escape the question.
It was the same that Virginia had put to
Rachel in her statement that, in her
opinion, nothing really permanent would
ever be done until the saloon was taken
out of the Rectangle. Henry Maxwell went
back to his parish work that afternoon
with added convictions on the license
business.

But if the saloon was a factor in
the problem of the life of Raymond, no
less was the First Church and its little
company of disciples who had pledged to
do as Jesus would do. Henry Maxwell,
standing at the very centre of the
movement, was not in a position to judge
of its power as some one from the
outside might have done. But Raymond
itself felt the touch in very many ways,
not knowing all the reasons for the
change.

The winter was gone and the year
was ended, the year which Henry Maxwell
had fixed as the time during which the
pledge should be kept to do as Jesus
would do. Sunday, the anniversary of
that one a year ago, was in many ways
the most remarkable day that the First
Church ever knew. It was more important
than the disciples in the First Church
realized. The year had made history so
fast and so serious that the people were
not yet able to grasp its significance.
And the day itself which marked the
completion of a whole year of such
discipleship was characterized by such
revelations and confessions that the
immediate actors in the events
themselves could not understand the
value of what had been done, or the
relation of their trial to the rest of
the churches and cities of the country.

It happened that the week before
that anniversary Sunday the Rev. Calvin
Bruce, D.D., of the Nazareth Avenue
Church, Chicago, was in Raymond, where
he had come on a visit to some old
friends, and incidentally to see his old
seminary classmate, Henry Maxwell. He
was present at the First Church and was
an exceedingly attentive and interested
spectator. His account of the events in
Raymond, and especially of that Sunday,
may throw more light on the entire
situation than any description or record
from other sources.